Quiet Professionals, Noisy Machinery

Headshot at 100 Yards… With a 1911

We’ve mentioned before the old Paul Poole / Sandy Ballard trick of nailing target after target with a .45 at 100m, which they used as a way to wake up us young pups in SOT and make us pay attention. It was more of a stunt than something combat-useful, but it made us realize that those old guys (Hell, Poole was a SOG and Son Tay vet who must have been in his 40s, ancient!) had some powerful tricks to treat us new dogs. Here’s three missed shots until the fourth goes “ding!” at 100 yards. You can do learn to do this.

And it is a huge confidence builder with your pistol when you do.

The video is from a trainer named Israel “Ish” Beauchamp, who commented on our site and thereby incentivized us go look him up. We don’t know the guy, but he’s s cop who’s been plowing the fields of PSD work and training for years now, and we liked his video for these reasons:

It shows you what can be done with a non-magical, ordinary service pistol. (Can’t do this? Then you need to train more).

It’s directly focused on the matter at hand, unlike videos that ramble or digress.

It’s completely absent the bluster and self-promotion that some YouTube “stars” indulge in.

Dude knows how to stay on point, and to edit a video.

Unlike that famous ex-PSD legend-in-his-own-mind on YouTube, we get the impression that Ish is a grown-up who would be great to take a class with, no matter whether you’re an ace shooter, a pro with some too-long-off-the-range rust on him, or a novice wondering what all those gadgets on the left side of your .45 actually do.

I’ve heard and read a few old-timers’ stories that begin, “I was polite but skeptical about Keith’s claims, and then…” One of them involved, IIRC, a 675-yard kill on an elk or mule deer. There are guys who have missed that shot… with a scoped .300 Win Mag and a rest.

Every business I have ever known prizes its best salesmen and -women. (Well, every successful one. Business, as a field, is not immune to bozosity in the corner office). And most savvy sales managers love to hire people with team sports experience. Why? Part of selling is dealing with lots of rejection, and coming back. Just like part of sports is getting your team’s ass kicked and coming back onto the field next outing, intent on winning. Someone who’s always won has never had to rebound from a loss, and is much less use to a business than someone who can bounce back from a beating.

Story #1: I got my C&R license after watching my friend Gerald consistently knock over coke cans at 100 yards with an East German Makarov. He was a Vietnam vet AFCS 3P055A (dog handler) who spent most of his 2 tours outside the wire looking for Victor Charlie with his dog he had to leave behind at Clark in PI. The guy is the quietest person I know and has an interesting skill set.

Story #2: my buddy Dale who left Ohio in the 70’s to get away from Howard Meszenbaum and his anti gun agenda is superb with a 44 Magnum. We were out shooting revolvers at the same range as the last story, me with my S&W 66 and him with his S&W 29. He told me the story of Elmer Keith whacking the elk at 500+ yards and I called BS on it. He said he could shoot the 400 yard gong. I bet him a breakfast at Cruel Jacks on I-80 he couldn’t do it. He said “Spot for me because the front sight covers anything I shoot at past 300 yards and I’ll have to walk the rounds onto the target”. He hit the gong with rounds 3,4,5,&6.

I bought breakfast the following weekend.

Me, I can’t hit crap with a handgun, Minute of Pie Plate at 50 yards at best. But with the right guy and the right tools, they are scary.

No B.S., I used to tag a 12 inch gong with my Glock 19 at 100 with 115 grain white box 6-8/10 times before the target was destroyed by my friend and his mosin. It was the coolest thing to the steel ring that far away and definitely had you honed in on every little detail of breaking the shot.

Also, won a few free beers off that little trick…home range advantage of course!

Not a surprise to me.
I tried a 2″ smith at a 100 yard 12″ gong and hit it twice out of the first 5 tries. No wind and I could see the dust raised by my misses, both of which helped. J frames can be very accurate with the right ammo.

What a lot of people don’t know is that an inch or two of rifling is enough to spin-stabilize a bullet. Beyond that first inch, it’s important that the rifling be consistently the same twist or a longer barrel makes accuracy worse (although it can make drop much less, by increasing velocity).

Precision shooting’s resident Small bore BR expert gunsmith did a test back around 03 where he trimmed a M52 winchester barrel down so short it barely protruded from the receiver, Much to his surprise , it shot better groups at 50 yards than it did when the Hart match barrel was its full length

I learned to shoot handguns at 100+ yards as a kid and have always thought it’s no big deal. It’s fun to see people scoff at seeing me pull out my 1911 on our rifle range – until they see the pepper poppers fall or hear the plates ring. When people say they can’t shoot a pistol that far I think, “Why not?”.
My favorite bet I ever won was when I knocked down 5 poppers with 5 shots at 280 yards with my Taurus PT 145. I even surprised myself with that one.

Paul Poole is the reason that I can put 8 out of 10 pistol rounds on a pepper popper at 100 yards today.

Here’s a drill I use:
Start at the 50 yard line with 50 rounds. Entire course of fire is conducted slow fire, standing off-hand.
Fire one round. If you hear a ding. Step back one yard and repeat.
If you don’t hear a ding, step forward one yard and repeat.
Repeat until all 50 rounds fired.
Now look at where you’re at standing. If you shot a perfect score, you should be back at the 100 yard line.
I do this one first, before I do anything involving speed or drawing. It’s purely about sight package and trigger control.
After that, when you move back up to the 25 yard line, those plates will look like they’re about the size of trash can lids. You’ couldn’t miss if you tried.

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WeaponsMan is a blog about weapons. Primarily ground combat weapons, primarily small arms and man-portable crew-served weapons. The site owner is a former Special Forces weapons man (MOS 18B, before the 18 series, 11B with Skill Qualification Indicator of S), and you can expect any guest columnists to be similarly qualified.

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